The Met’s Crowd-Pleasing ‘Andrea Chénier’ Is Marred By Miscast Doomed Lovers

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1605348" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/Chenier_0963_B.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A scene from the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Andrea Chénier showing a crowded Revolutionary tribunal, with the baritone portraying Carlo Gérard standing at a tricolor-draped table as soldiers, officials, and onlookers surround him on multiple levels of the set." width="970" height="696" data-caption='Igor Golovatenko as Carlo Gérard. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera</span>’>

During the 1950s and 1960s, Giordano’s Andrea Chénier was frequently performed at the Metropolitan Opera featuring some of the era’s biggest superstars. However, the opera has been seen less frequently the past few decades due to the lack of genuinely dramatic voices needed to do justice to the opera’s three demanding leading roles. The Met’s current revival, its first in nearly a dozen years, features an attractive, HD-ready cast that only sporadically rises to the occasion.

Based on a true story, Giordano’s 1896 Chénier with a libretto by Luigi Illica (co-author with Giuseppe Giacosa of the text for La Bohème which premiered the same year) embraces some of the ideals of verismo opera in its lushly accompanied emotional arias and duets, though its lovers come from a higher social class than those featured in well-known works by Puccini, Mascagni and Leoncavallo. The poet son of a diplomat, the real André Chénier (1762-1794) became entangled in the French Revolution and was executed just three days before the Reign of Terror ended. Maddalena de Coigny, his fictional operatic lover, is the daughter of a Countess; she is also pursued by Carlo Gérard, one of her mother’s servants who eventually rises to become a Revolutionary leader. The three form a fraught triangle whose vicissitudes are examined in vibrantly soaring music that may ultimately lack the memorably melodic inspiration of other more affecting verismo operas.

Though it demands three larger-than-life singing actors, the opera is most often embraced as one of the most sought-after spinto tenor vehicles. Throughout the Met’s prime mid-century years under Rudolf Bing, Chénier became a frequent golden-age showcase for Mario Del Monaco, Richard Tucker, franco corelli and Carlo Bergonzi in the title role with Zinka Milanov, Renata Tebaldi or Eileen Farrell as Maddalena, while Gérard was frequently played by Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill or Ettore Bastianini.

The Met’s current Chénier by Nicolas Joël with simple though evocative sets and costumes by Hubert Monloup premiered in April 1996 as the last new production mounted for Luciano Pavarotti who played the title role in his final full-length Met opera telecast. Inevitably he was followed by Plácido Domingo (who in 2002 at age 61 was roundly criticized for transposing down much of the poet’s music), then by Ben Heppner.

This season’s revival no doubt happened because local favorite Piotr Beczala took on the title role for the first time this summer in a concert performance at the Salzburg Festival. Beczala, who had notable successes during the Met’s 2022-23 season starring in new productions of both Giordano’s Fedora and Wagner’s Lohengrin, has however had a rocky time at Lincoln Center since then. Illness kept the Polish tenor from singing the premiere of Carrie Cracknell’s controversial new Carmen, while during the following New Year’s Eve gala he foolhardily soldiered on through a disastrous Radames in the new Michael Mayer Aida.

<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1605349" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/Chenier_5902_C.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A scene from the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Andrea Chénier in which the tenor and soprano portraying Chénier and Maddalena face each other beside a toppled statue fragment and a towering guillotine silhouette against a stark, shadowed architectural backdrop." width="970" height="678" data-caption='Piotr Beczala and sonya yoncheva as Chénier and Maddalena. <span class=”media-credit”>Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera</span>’>

The tenor who turns 59 on December 28 has lately been taking on roles like Radames and Turandot’s Calaf that many consider too heavy for his big lyric voice. Chénier too asks for a spinto tenor and, on opening night, Beczala, while dramatically blank, sounded healthy but tossed off his show-stopping music in an uncomfortably loud and unsubtle way. His arias, particularly the “Improvviso” and “Come un bel dì di maggio,” call for a more nuanced and poetic approach than we heard in Beczala’s strained and driven renditions.

As his nemesis Gérard, Igor Golovatenko, on the other hand, showed he at least had the real vocal goods. In his opening aria in which he dotes on his boss’s unavailable daughter, the Russian baritone sang with exciting, theater-filling ardor and brought a sympathetic intensity to his ill-fated pursuit of Maddalena. Golovatenko’s ringing big aria “Nemico della patria” was suffused with compulsive, tortured intent and was deservedly rewarded with the premiere’s hardiest ovation. Gérard proved to be the baritone’s most successful Met portrayal to date, especially after his ineffectual Prince Yeletsky in last season’s Queen of Spades.

Though dominated by the Chénier-Maddalena-Gérard triangle, Giordano’s opera is also unusually replete with vivid character roles which give their respective performers a chance to shine. Nancy Fabiola Herrera’s plush Countess di Coigny memorably made much of her haughty grandeur. While Alexander Birch Elliott sounded great despite Joël’s hopelessly dated effeminate depiction of Fléville. Though Siphokazi Molteno’s Bersi was visually sparkling, her slim mezzo was frequently covered by Daniele Rustioni’s bustling orchestra. Debuting, Guriy Gurev made a pleasant enough impression as Roucher, while Maurizio Muraro, usually cast in buffo roles, was genuinely frightening as Mathieu though a big exposed high note defeated him. Brenton Ryan’s refreshingly young Incredibile may have lacked some of its needed oiliness, while Olesya Petrova brought her sumptuous mezzo to an arresting cameo as the blind Madelon.

And what of Chénier’s leading lady? Three years ago, Sonya Yoncheva exuded a stylish intensity to Giordano’s Fedora; however, her following Met assignment in Bellini’s Norma found the soprano in way over her head, and she fled after the fourth performance. A sympathetic Lisa in Queen of Spades earlier this year brought hope that she’d conquered some nagging vocal issues, but, unfortunately, Maddalena exposed once again her maddening tendency to take on heavy roles beyond her capabilities.

While she brought a youthful ebullience to the first act’s young Maddalena, the following three acts require the kind of hearty spinto outpourings that exposed Yoncheva’s wobbly, thinning high notes and persistent intonation difficulties. Though her restless beauty made its effect during the brutal third-act encounter with Gérard, her distressing rendition of the beloved “La mamma morta” aria varied so wildly from phrase to phrase that one had no idea what would come next.

The demanding exertions of “Vicino a te”—the duet with Chénier as they march toward the guillotine—found Yoncheva nearly depleted though she blasted out a big final high note—was it a B or a slightly lowered B-flat? The soprano’s inadequacies throughout the evening aroused grave reservations about her upcoming Met debut as Puccini’s Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly.

Though this season he has also led performances of Don Giovanni and La Bohème as the Met’s new principal guest conductor, Rustioni made his boldest statement yet with Chénier, a particular favorite of his which he recently led to great acclaim in Lyon and Paris (with a completely different, more suitable cast). Rustioni was fascinating to watch as he uncovered delightful felicities in Giordano’s orchestral writing. But, as with Molteno, he sometimes let his vibrantly lush orchestra overwhelm the singers though Beczala and Golovatenko coped best. The conductor demonstrated his great love for Chénier, though unfortunately he had to make do with his less-than-optimal tenor and soprano.

Perhaps the pair will arrive with greater security to the run’s sixth and final performance, which will be shown in HD in theaters worldwide on December 13.